Local businesses tend to understand the inherent importance of metrics, but when it comes to social media platforms, it can be confusing to figure out what’s most important. Perhaps part of the difficulty with social media platforms is they provide so much information to businesses it can be hard to determine what to focus on.
Unfortunately, a common response when overwhelmed is to become indecisive and not take action. Therefore, in this post, I’m going to share specifically what metrics you should pay the most attention to and why.
Your Facebook reach. You can see the impact each of your Facebook posts has had with this metric. It’s valuable to take note over time on the type of response and reach of each post. By analyzing this data, you’ll be able to determine what content resonates most highly with your followers. Once you have this piece of information, you can take it and use it to craft future posts you believe will lead to a similar response.
How your blog posts are being shared. You may casually note how often your local business blog posts are shared by your readers. Have you considered though you could understand much more if you took time to compile and analyze this data?
For instance, by pulling this data together, you may discover a certain type of post lends itself to being shared on Twitter. Not only will this information help you shape future blog posts, but perhaps what you also share on Twitter.
Understand your traffic sources. Some days you have great traffic on your blog and as you consider why you notice much of the traffic was referred from another blog. As you hang out in the social space that is the internet, you will start to find cheerleaders and fans.
It can be invaluable to understand who these people are as by identifying them you can grow your relationship and perhaps even look for partnership opportunities. These refers are invaluable to your business so it is important to acknowledge them which can be hard to do if you’re not paying attention to where your traffic is coming from!
Know your blog engagement. In order to generate content that keeps your readers returning, it’s vital to know what local business content resonates with your readers. To make a determination about this item, you need to understand when someone visits your blog what posts they’re looking at, if they’re spending time exploring the blog, and how much time in total is spent on the blog. Of course, you want to capture as much of your reader’s time as possible so it’s important to learn their interests well and give them more of what they want!
For more information, refer to the post on Social Media Magic: 5 Social Metrics Worth Factoring into Your Campaign. It’s an important topic to take to heart so you can monitor your local business marketing strategy to know what’s working and what’s not (and make changes as needed!).
About The Guest Author: Chris Marentis, founder and CEO of the marketing firm Surefire Social, is a recognized expert in the field of local business marketing leveraging website development, local search engine optimization and social media marketing to generate leads and brand local businesses throughout the digital web.
Social Media Puzzle Photo via Shutterstock
